I wanna be a super hero

I’ve always wanted to. I think it would be the coolest thing. I love a lot of different heroes, but my two favorites are Spider Man and Wolverine. The thing is, that Wolverine, as cool as he is, is not really as cool without his extra strong skeleton. He can recover from almost anything very quickly, but that really isn’t that impressive by itself. I’ve been watching Heroes seasons 1&2 since we got them for Christmas. There are two characters with this same kind of healing ability. They are very important characters, but in reality they aren’t all that strong, There are many other characters that are much stronger.

Of course, I have to wonder why they breakup most of the character powers. The super healing abilities aren’t really the weakest. There are two guys that fly. Those are some pretty lame abilities by themselves. In the comics heroes often have more than one power. The most powerful have many abilities, like Super Man who has super speed, super hearing, super sign, heat vision, flight, super strength … You get the point right? He’s just super.

I always wondered how the comic book creators came up with their characters. Do they decide on powers, then the story for the powers, or are they sitting down when a spider walks across the ceiling and think, “he what about a man that got bit by a radioactive spider … what kind of powers would he have?” I think it would be great to come up with comic book characters. There are a lot of lame ideas out there, but I guess you need some lame ideas. The problem is that they like to run with things that work. Batman works, Spiderman work so this means that we should try and put every animal and insect in front of the word “man” and see what floats. Now we have great ideas like Ant Man and the Human Wasp (just a variant). Seriously there are so many twists on this theme out there it isn’t funny.

I think if I were a character designer I’d start by trying to come up with some interesting powers, then build a deep character around that. There has to be some ideas that haven’t been done yet. Let’s try, how about a power inverter? This character absorbs and converts other powers into a different kind of power. It would be more or less passive to start with, but the character could learn to store up power for use later. The trick is that each power converts to a given other kind of power. For example, a physical blow is a kinetic power. This would convert into … let’s say a mental power of mind reading. So if you hit this character they could read minds. The harder the hit the more powerful the mind reading. Wouldn’t it be hilarious to watch this guy get hit over and over trying to read someone’s mind? “Don’t stop hitting I think I’m almost there, he is thinking … oh hit me harder!” It would be like a reverse interrogation torture. Of course other powers would result in other abilities, like if someone tried reading his mind then he could fly. Each power would have a specific ability that it is converted into.

The back story would be harder. I’m thinking a genetic anomaly, but how does the person figure out their powers. That is the fun part. School yard fights, but he start hearing what the other kid is thinking after getting punched? He accidentally gets electrocuted and is suddenly has x-ray vision. Lots of crazy things before it is all figured out. Then the real learning starts. It would take a while before he figured out how to train his body to retain excess power like a battery. Eventually a suit could be constructed to apply some of the forces to help generate the powers, like magnetism that is changes into healing abilities, so electromagnets in the suit activate to make him heal and other forces might trigger impervious skin. The possibilities are really endless. The hardest part will be keeping track of what each force is converted into.

Any ideas on the Inverter?